for cutting and binding wheat is from 10s. to 14s., or from $2 40c. to $3 36c. per acre, and 8s., or $1 92c. per acre for oats and barley.  The men who cut, bind, and shock by the acre generally have to find their own beer, and will earn from 24s. to 28s., or from $5 76c. to $6 72c. per week.  The regular laborers frequently let themselves to their employers during the harvest month at from 20s. to 24s. per week, which is just about double their usual wages.  In addition to this pay, they are often allowed two quarts of ale and two quarts of small beer per day; not the small beer of New England, made only of hops, ginger, and molasses; but a far more stimulating drink, quite equal to our German lager.  This gallon of beer will cost the farmer about 10d., or 20c.  Where the piece-work laborer furnishes his own malt liquor, it must cost him on an average about an English shilling, or twenty-four cents, a day.

Two or three of the men who formed the circle around the fire at The Green Man, had come to purchase, or pay for, a keg of beer for their harvest allowance.  It was to me a matter of half-painful interest to see what vital importance they attached to a supply of this stimulant—­to see how much more they leaned upon its strength and comfort than upon food.  It was not in my heart to argue the question with them, or to seek to dispel the hereditary and pleasant illusion, that beer alone, of all human drinks, could carry them through the long, hot hours of toil in harvest.  Besides, I wished to get at their own free thoughts on the subject without putting my own in opposition to them, which might have slightly restricted their full expression.  Every one of them held to the belief, as put beyond all doubt or question by the experience of the present and all past generations, that wheat, barley and oats could not be reaped and ricked without beer, and beer at the rate of a gallon a day per head.  Each had his string of proofs to this conviction terminating in a pewter mug, just as some poor people praying to the Virgin have a string of beads ending in a crucifix, which they tell off with honest hearts and sober faces.  Each could make it stand to reason that a man could not bear the heat and burden of harvest labor without beer.  Each had his illustration in the case of some poor fellow who had tried the experiment, out of principle or economy, and had failed under it.  It was of no use to talk of temperance and all that.  It was all very nice for well-to-do people, who never blistered their hands at a sickle or a scythe, to tell poor, laboring men, sweating at their hot and heavy work from sun to sun, that they must not drink anything but milk and water or cold tea and coffee, but put them in the wheat-field a few days, and let them try their wishy-washy drinks and see what would become of them.  As I have said, I did not undertake to argue the men out of this belief, partly because I wished to learn from them all they thought and felt on the subject, and partly, I must confess, because I was reluctant to lay a hard hand upon a source of comfort which, to them, holds a large portion of their earthly enjoyments, especially when I could not replace it with a substitute which they would accept, and which would yield them an equal amount of satisfaction.